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You may have noticed a peculiar-looking graphic under your name and avatar. Special thanks to TheEnd for providing these!

What's going on is that I've decided to do a trial run of badges for regular Members.

Unfortunately, due to technical issues, it's not currently possible to implement multiple badges that users can choose from, so that is why badges for Members have not been implemented in the past. On this occasion, I've instead opted for a cop-out and shuffled a large variety of badges (about 15) amongst members based on their post count.

A few key things that you should know about:

As I mentioned, this is a trial run, so I may end up removing the badges until a future, unspecified time. Although, as some people might now, what starts as a trial run on Serenes Forest usually ends up becoming permanent. That's why I'm still an admin around here.

Do NOT ask me (or another staff member) to change your badge. If you don't like your badge then... you'll probably just have to live with it. It's just a badge, man.

I may end up re-shuffling the badges for whatever reason, so don't be surprised if your badge changes even though you haven't done anything.

Couldn't you have them both shown? So the icon plus the dots? I kinda liked the dots so you can see how much someone has posted (kinda weird you can't see the absolute postcounts of members anywhere, but I guess that's becuase of privacy, and I kind of like it).

Other than, in the future, an option to choose from a couple of buttons would be great, if possible, of course. If not, ah well, it'll change when you post more anyway (it will, right?).

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Couldn't you have them both shown? So the icon plus the dots? I kinda liked the dots so you can see how much someone has posted (kinda weird you can't see the absolute postcounts of members anywhere, but I guess that's becuase of privacy, and I kind of like it).

From what I remember of IPB, the only way you'd be able to have a group icon and the pips would be to create a custom field and have the group icon located in said field. I don't recall adding that custom field to be *easy*, however. This is, of course, assuming that IPB hasn't improved their board software in a meaningful way since the last time I used it.

As for the total post counts, it's because it's a silly number that becomes a way to measure one's e-penis. Message boards should stress the quality of posts, not the ability to churn posts out in a fast amount of time. Yes, pips/group icons still facilitate this slightly (general range of post count), but less so than having a full post count displayed.

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Whatever kind of change it is that is made, there will always be at least one person in opposition.

Can I have my badge removed?

EDIT: May compile a list of grievances later.

If it hadn't been him it would have been me. Why was I yoked with the image of a character who has no Heroic qualities? It would have been better to have avoided the stratification of the memberbase by badges altogether.

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If it hadn't been him it would have been me. Why was I yoked with the image of a character who has no Heroic qualities? It would have been better to have avoided the stratification of the memberbase by badges altogether.

I agree. Stratified member badges encourage petty divisiveness and snap judgement--putting people into boxes instead of using your brain. They're just an arbitrary symbol that create false association among people who usually have little in common. Also, tying it to post count turns it into a major status symbol, especially if "more posts = more badass" and that just doesn't end well. We should either have just one as simply an aesthetic thing, or no badges at all.

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I have a list of grievances I would like to bring against the the member badge agenda.

I see no option to opt-out. There is no reason to deny a reason to opt-out of this program other than that you wish to remove the individuality of our userbase by forcing them to conform.

The available member badges are oppressively FE9/10 oriented. There is no reason that we cannot have member badges that have a mix of characters from non-FE9/10 games in the series. Because we already have many FE9/10 member badges made, it would be wasteful to not use some of them. Therefore a similar number of member badges should be produced for each game in the series. Failure to do this will show that the staff wishes to push an FE9/10 based agenda to the point of making members who don't like these games feel like they're being excluded.

Who the fuck is this and why would you want to force somebody's badge to be this character badge, even for a short amount of time?